Seki - Impasse
by Aloice
Summary: A Secret Santa gift for askfrostedezreal (Toast) on tumblr to celebrate their work with askzedoftheshadows. Seventeen numbered drabbles followed by a dream. Ezreal and Zed wax black for each other, but there's also red. And white. And asymmetry.
1. Countdown

**One.**

It always comes down to half a stone in a game of Go.

Go is the game of the Gods: there's light, there are shadows, and then there is asymmetry.

Zed suspends a piece in mid-air, pondering the eye of the dragon on the chessboard.

Ezreal taps the board to keep the whole construct afloat: even in Ionia, life can be supercritical.

Shruikens slice the wintertide wide. An essence flux disintegrates into the wind.

Unanimous: 'I win.'

* * *

><p><strong>Two.<strong>

He wonders when was the last time he let anyone get this close.

They touch just under the roof of an old Ionian temple, the wood stinking of false prayers and sacrifices for hundreds of years.

He snaps: 'don't touch me.'

_But it feels good._

* * *

><p><strong>Three.<strong>

Why isn't pain

A straight line

The contours of the katars

Shouldn't lie

Maybe we're lost tonight

Love is blind

* * *

><p><strong>Four.<strong>

He ends up staring at my carnage, that interest in living things overcoming his fury.

I tell him, 'Join the Order of the Shadows.'

He says, 'I hate your guts.'

But that's just how we greet each other at sunrise.

* * *

><p><strong>Five.<strong>

He's the sand in an hourglass.

_How does he escape me?_ _How can he stay so elusive, when he's trapped within himself, a boy running from the wheel of fate inside his own heart?_

Try: _he doesn't._

I'm walking into the fucking Piltoverian desert to chase the sand.

* * *

><p><strong>Six.<strong>

_Do you want to kill me?_

The unsaid question, floating in the air. We both pretend we know exactly what to ask and how to answer.

But the crimson living streaks on our mirrored faces are too attractive.

* * *

><p><strong>Seven.<strong>

'Do not fear the shrouded path.'

'You're the goddamned one with the map.'

* * *

><p><strong>Eight.<strong>

Shadows and glaciers both grow in the dark.

– Except that's not how it works at all.

_Four dozen hours are wasted by each man trying to prove they share no similarities whatsoever._

* * *

><p><strong>Nine.<strong>

'What happened with you?'

'What happened with _you_?'

'You never smiled.'

'You were doomed.'

Both of them should have died a long time ago.

* * *

><p><strong>Ten.<strong>

_Know your environment. _

_Brave the shadows, and find the truth._

* * *

><p><strong>Eleven.<strong>

I will fold him to my will.

Crystals are faulty because of their inherent order;

They will break.

* * *

><p><strong>Twelve.<strong>

'I'm not addicted to you.'

He says, as he rearranges his belongings using patterns he doesn't recognize.

_It's a habit_ is a feeble excuse.

* * *

><p><strong>Thirteen.<strong>

.

We probably understand each other better without words.

* * *

><p><strong>Fourteen.<strong>

'Did you make tea for me last night?'

'No.'

'Thought so.'

It keeps happening.

* * *

><p><strong>Fifteen.<strong>

The scars are adding up.

If they have come from stolen moments of joy, no one remembers.

* * *

><p><strong>Sixteen.<strong>

Heartbeats are sweet.

– Sweeter when they falter –

– So why are we so bitter?

* * *

><p><strong>Seventeen.<strong>

They walk next to each other in asymmetry.

– Parallels,

– Asymptotes,

– Ghostblades and arcane shadows

– Run?

– Stay?

– _'Live.'_


	2. Allegrissimo

_**Allegrissimo.**_

_**– That one ending, where we kill each other.**_

* * *

><p>Dark rain. Crimson blood. A glint of the sun in your hair: false gold.<p>

They had brought an etwahl into the audience, three octaves ringing at once;

The erhu sang as if we were warriors of the blood moon, the tempo rising;

But we're beyond that, aren't we, Ezreal? You and I?

You with your essence flux; me with my shadows;

We need but ourselves; no more, no less.

I wipe the mud clean from your triangular marks. A sneer.

You trace every single line of the scars on my face. A smirk.

_** "– Let's dance."**_

* * *

><p><em>Do you have a heart? Do you really?<em>

_ Are you your shadow? Are you really?_

All the questions we can't answer; I can't

_Thaw_

And you can't _illuminate_, either.

And it's not like we really want to –

_** "That's not why you're here, is it?"**_

* * *

><p>I have infinite contempt for the weak.<p>

So beg to me, _plead_, as I rise above you, tower by steel and star.

There's no balance in this world; we're no yin and yang, no symmetry

Nothing could be as pleasing as a perfect scintillating death mark.

* * *

><p>Where are you trying to go? <em>Dance<em>?

Think you can entrance me? Enthrall? Slip? Fade?

Go on. Try me. There's not yet blood on my lips.

You will repeat as cerulean shatters behind your eyelids

"_**Tanta Stultitia Mortalium Est."**_

* * *

><p>Count your heartbeats while ye may,<p>

The katars are still a-flying

The same frost that glitters today

Tomorrow will be melting

* * *

><p>The rain turns into snow. Into frost. Into shadows.<p>

I breathe heavily in the cold before you suddenly burst out laughing:

Manic love, black through and through, hell screaming through serendipity.

* * *

><p>I die in your arms, fallen like fractured glaze;<p>

You weep, blood swirling like a visual lullaby.

Black shadows and white frost spill from the world of Go;

忘此世，你我玉石俱焚。

* * *

><p>"<em><strong>Maybe we can force a seki next time."<strong>_


End file.
